The 90`s

World sympathy won't be enough for Israel

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of December 29th - January 4th, 1994

Shame as a word has fallen into relative disuse.  Shame as a concept, as an emotion has all but disappeared from the world's psyche.  Everything and anything goes so long as it jibes with one's self-interests.

This is very must the case in geopolitics where hardly any kind of actions or behavior pass as shameful these days.  Like dropping a needle in a silent forest, just as no one may be there to hear it, doesn't mean the needle didn't make a sound.  So too just because most don't want to acknowledge shameful actions doesn't mean they do not take place or that they aren't shameful.

Uppermost among the prevalent cases is that of poor, tragic Bosnia.  Here is a country that was formally recognized by the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and so forth and concurrently blockaded to defend itself against aggression.  The West decided to enforce an arms embargo while simultaneously appeasing every act of Serbian aggression against millions of defenseless Moslems in Bosnia. The West sent in U.N. "peace keepers" who became pitiful pawns for the Serbs.  The West had demonstrated the backbone of jellyfish when it comes to defending the Bosnians and have been willing lately to acquiesce to any absurd Serbian territorial demand that would render Bosnia's borders as porous and indefensible as Swiss cheese is to mice.

American breast-beating, saber-rattling and guarantees for Bosnia have all turned to naught because the administration hasn't the stomach for sending in the Marines for what would surely be a bloody and protracted war.  The American people and newly elected Congress also have little desire to send U.S. forces abroad for lengthy campaigns. The Europeans, most notably the British and French have demonstrated their century-old penchant for appeasing violent dictators and aggressors while striking pseudo-fashionable poses of deep moral conviction.

The New Republic in its Dec. 19 issue says of Bosnia that "the realists will say that Bosnia is only Bosnia, that a quarter of a million people is only a quarter of a million people.  What matters about a stain, though, is not its magnitude. What matters is its debility; and if the conquest of Bosnia really is irreversible, then the stain of Bosnia is indelible."

The U.N. has a resolution up for a vote soon that calls on all states and all parts of the U.N. system to "extend their support to the Palestinian people in their quest for self-determination."  This is expected to pass by a wide margin. Self-determination in U.N. parlance is coextensive with sovereignty and independence. The German sponsors of the revolution are oblivious to the implications of trying to supersede the Rabin-Arafat Accords which set-up a five-year test Period of Palestinian Arab self-rule.

"Independence Now" is the slogan coming from the offices of the Palestinian authority.  "Jerusalem is our Capital" is the cry beginning with Yasser Arafat on down to the Hamas cleric to the man-on-the-Arab-street.  No matter that the PLO has shown a complete inability to live up to its commitments. No mater that terrorism against Jews is running at the speed of light.  No matter that with a peace agreement there is no peace. These things don't matter to an Israeli government who believes the territories must be surrendered to Arafat with all deliberate speed.

In 1984, George Orwell painted a grim picture of future society.  The PLO has a simliar literary work. It is called "1974," and it refers to the "Phased Plan" whereby the PLO will accept Palestine in bits and pieces from the withdrawing Israelis and will work in an evolutionary way to wear down and eventually wear-out the Jewish State.  Arafat and his people talk about it all the time. The Israeli government doesn't want to hear it. Jews die daily and the government doesn't want to see it. Jerusalem is formally on the agenda to have its final status negotiated between Israel and the PLO within the next two years and the Rabin government isn't ashamed of that fact.

Bosnia? Hell's bells, Israeli Arabs now call themselves "Palestinian Israelis" and are actively agitating for autonomy in their areas of the Galilee and Negev.  Arafat calls for the original 1947 partition lines, not the 1948 cease-fire lines. Bihac, Sarajevo and Tuzla have been reduced to indefensible Bosnian ghettoes.  In a future conflict might be we find the city-state of Tel Aviv encircled by hostile Arabs, pleading for U.N. or U.S. protection? How well will our enclaves of Safed and Beersheva fare after being physically cut off from the coastal plain?  We will surely enjoy the world's pity, as do the Bosnians, but what will that get us?

Most Laborites and Peace Now activists are inherently secular, irreligious.  In place of Jewish rituals and beliefs they've deified the peace process and in place of the Torah, peace treaties have accrued their own spirituality.  It is a form of left-wing fundamentalism that is oblivious to facts, realities and one's own self interests. Dogma. Children and the elderly are sacrificed, Molech-like on the altar of peace.  The peace deity knows no satiation, no end to concessions, for without the process, what would fill the lives of its devotees?

This peace extremism is every bit as dangerous an "ism" as was Communism - inflexible, disinterested in public opinion and callous about the lives of its citizens.  Retention of power and the process are paramount and it just doesn't matter how shameful are the consequences of their actions because shame can be removed from one's lexicon if one constructs a new cult where the moral compass operates from wholly different coordinates.

The 90`s

On the campaign trail with candidate Barbanel

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of December 1st - 7th, 1993

"Good Morning.  I'm Howard Barbanel running for City Council.  How are you?"

"Hello, Howard Barbanel, running for Council, I hope to get your vote..."

Starting right after the Democratic primary on Sept. 14, I repeated that mantra early mornings too numerous to count at subway stations all over the 9th City Council District where I was the Republican candidate for the job.  Six weeks of street campaigning in diverse neighborhoods such as the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights and Central Harlem. Weekday mornings and Sundays (on Shabbat we rested). During the final three we were out there meeting people during the weekdays and in the evenings again at the subway.

"Hey, I just saw you here yesterday."  "I've seen you here three times this week,"  passerby's would comment upon gazing at my permanently affixed and ever-present outstretched hand.  "I really want the job," and "I hope to get your vote" would be my standard replies.

Campaigning at subways is a time-honored New York tradition - it’s where the people are.  Each station has its own personality and the people there their own characteristics. Interestingly, the most polite and pleasant straphangers were up in Harlem.  Almost everyone would accept a piece of literature and virtually everyone would shake my hand. The further South one went, the more one encountered people in a rush, before heir daily caffeine fix or just the variously impolite.  Always at subway stations I went with campaign staff and volunteers, so there would be a sizeable presence and to facilitate the distribution of literature. There are many different kinds of handshakes as well: There's the full-grip firm shake, for both men and women (women today want to shake your hand the same way as a man, and woe unto you if you try the pre-1960- finger-tip approach); there is the "I'm clutching my token in my palm, so you get two fingers" handshake; there is the token-in-the-fingers so you get a thumb-shake (when faced with toke-clutchers, I would say, "I want your vote, not your token.") and the left-handed shake because of tokens, newspapers and coffee in the right hand. 

Out on the stump most would take your hand (or part of it) and many, whether they voted for me or not, would wish me good luck in my quest for the Holy Grail.  All told, during the six weeks of street campaigning I must shook 14,000 or so hands, enough to qualify me for a Palmolive commercial with Madge.

The Candidate

In the famous movie, The Candidate, starring Robert Redford, he is recruited by the party professionals who tell him, "here's the deal, we want you to run and make a good fight out of it, but you lose."  Of the 51 City Council seats, more than 10 went unopposed - with Democrats being re-elected by acclamation. This is something that I believe is extremely unhealthy for the democratic process and only encourages poor, complacent, disinterested government.  New York is a Democratic town, but this year we Republicans had a shot - this year Rudy Giuliani was going to make it and this year we needed to field as many aggressive candidates as possible so that we could win Gracie Mansion.

My district is a terribly gerrymandered pastiche of different neighborhoods, bound by nothing in common whatsoever.  The Upper West Side and Morning Side Heights have next to nothing in common with Central Harlem or Manhattan Valley, yet through the machinations of the political poobahs we found ourselves, as in a shotgun wedding, bound together for better or worse in the same district.  There was no way we could allow the incumbent to run unopposed and there was every desire to let the-powers-that-be-know that the residents of the southern end of this crazy district are extremely unhappy about the state of city services we were receiving.

The campaign in the Spring with petitioning following heavy fund-raising through the Summer.  During the whole six month period I can conclusively say that I've never before worked on any project as pervasively bone-crunching in the sheer magnitude of work it entailed.  Running for public office makes running Jewish organizations seem like childplay.

The key to running a good campaign is the staff and I was blessed with a crew of intelligent, dedicated people.  The main figure were my brother - Lewis Barbanel who was treasurer cum campaign manager. As were registered with the City's Campaign Finance Program we had to fill out a myriad of forms detailing every dollar raised and spent and Lewis managed this with aplomb.  Out on the streets I had the help of two indispensable Columbia students, Erica Adler and Darren Schlanger - both Democrats. They both worked tirelessly from dawn to dusk and beyond, with me daily at the subways, at speaking engagements, debates and everywhere we needed to be.  In Harlem, our campaign manager was James Williams. Now, Mr. Williams is a retired city worker, Republican stalwart and master street campaigner who unflinchingly, along with Harlem Republicans (yes, they do exist) trooped about 125th Street, Lennox, Powell and Douglass boulevards pressing the flesh and passing out the brochures.  They put their all into it and any candidate couldn't ask for me.

Media: We opted to spend the bulk of our funds on very visible bus station and subway stations ads that would be up for the whole month.  Let me tell you, it is much more comfortable campaigning at a subway station where your poster is on the staircase. On Broadway we had a bus shelter on literally every other block.  Being that my picture adorned these ads, I was no longer just a face in the crowd and people would stop me on the way to the cleaners, to the grocers or what-have-you to engage me in political discourse.  My Sentinel columns had to stay clear of local politics, much like Ronald Reagan movies being barred from TV during the 1948 election.

We also hand distributed more than 40,000 flyers and palm cards along with 25,000 copies of a four-page, full-color campaign newspaper which discussed my positions on all the issues in some depth.  The bus shelters and newspapers engendered high praise from other Republican candidates and officeholders, including Rudy Giuliani himself. It was an unorthodox approach, relying exclusively on print advertising, but having been a newspaper man for 14 years, we went with what I knew best and the results on the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights paid off. 

The Issues

The first three issues for me as an involved, committed Jew on running against C. Virginia Fields had to do with things that very much hit home.  First, she is a good pal of Professor Leonard Jeffries - so much so that she was roundly criticized in an editorial in The New York Times two years ago for playing blatant apologetics for his anti-Semitic blather.  Second, Fields was recently one of a half-dozen chairmen for a fund-raising dinner in honor of and to benefit Louis Farrakahn, the man who still calls Judaism a "gutter religion." Third, Fields openly voted against the Yankel Rosenbaum resolution last year in the City Council.  This was a resolution condemning the acquittal of Lemrick Nelson for Rosenbaum's death and expressing sympathy for Rosenbaum's family.

I am proud to say that none of our literature used this information in any disparaging way and at no time did we campaign personally in a negative manner.

Next on the list came her overall voting record.  During the last council session, Fields had a 98.9 percent "yes" voting record having voted affirmative on 783 of 788 votes.  One of "no" votes was on the Rosenbaum issue. This kind of voting is reminiscent of Community Party Politburo politics - typical in Beijing and Pyongyang, but should not be the case in the Big Apple.  My opponent is just typical of Council practices in general, where fully 90 percent of all votes are unanimous - this in a city of 7.5 million people! Machine politics and Tammany Halls are still very much alive and well in 1993.

Among the issues I felt strongly about was that of "sunshine", or openness.  We need a municipal C-SPAN channel in New York that will air all City Council sessions in their entirety as C-SPAN does for both houses of the Congress.  Additionally, all committee sessions should be aired. Presently, most council sessions take place behind a gauze curtain of anonymity where people don't know what their local legislature is up to.  I have urged that WNYC-TV Channel 31 (Channel 3 on Cable) be transformed from a quasi-PBS and leased-time channel into one that will let the sunshine in on what our government is doing.

The Homeless Crisis and crime were also high on my list.  The Upper West Side north of 96th Street contains a plethora of welfare hotels, homeless shelters, SROs, mental health facilities and such.  More than 15,000 of the homeless, mentally-ill and substance abusers were dumped into this area over the past four years, far out of proportion to other areas in Manhattan.  This has created a veneer of Calcutta on the streets and witnessed an explosion of crime.

I have called for enforcement of the city's Fair Share provisions that mandate that these kinds of problems and facilities be absorbed equally by different parts of the city and that no one neighborhood should bear the brunt of such a problem.

I issued a comprehensive plan to attack homelessness - a human tragedy of immense proportions.  It is a disgrace that the nation's most affluent city has people dying on the streets every night.  Fully 50 percent of the homeless single men have TB - many have AIDs, many (overlapping) are mentally-ill and are substance abusers.  We must recognize this as a health crisis and tackle it accordingly. The city spends $500 million per year on homelessness yet the problem keeps getting worse and worse.

On crime we've seen almost 50,000 fewer street level drugs arrests over the past few years and 6,000 violent incidents in our schools.  There were 1.5 million felonies committed last year with car theft becoming so common that the police online recover 15 percent of all stolen vehicles.

We have a city budget so out of whack that we've become the most highly taxed citizens in the continental U.S.  The budget is up to $32 billion - $6 billion more than the end of the Koch years and we have absolutely nothing to show for this spending.  To give you some perspective, the entire budget for the state government of New Jersey is $16 billion - half that of New York and the people there were fuming over the cost of government.  New Jersey has the same number of people as New York City. The state of Florida has a state budget of $35 billion and Florida has no state or city income taxes! New York has the fourth largest government budget in the nation.  We have more city employees than does the entire state government of California. Compare our 250,000-plus municipal workers with New Jersey's 65,000. This kind of spending is only possible because of unambiguous City Council approvals of the mayor's budget.

The multiple city and state income tax hikes, in the midst of a recession propelled us into a full-blown depression with over 350,000 jobs lost in town over the past four years.  Interestingly, over 20 percent of the job losses were suffered by Jews because of the elimination of white collar positions, this according to the City University study. Jobs are fleeing at a rate of 6,000 per month.  The city unemployment rate is now 10.8 percent, up from 8.7 percent in September, whereas in New Jersey the rate is only 6.5 percent. The youth unemployment rate is over 40 percent. I can't tell you how many friends of mine work in Secaucus and Jersey City, Westchester, Long Island and Connecticut.  

I have called for reductions in city income taxes back to the levels of the Koch years and elimination of unique and oppressive taxes such as the Unincorporated Business Tax, the Commercial Rent Tax, the Subchapter S Corporation Tax, scaling back the higher taxes on co-ops and condos versus one family homes (four times higher) and our Hotel Guest Tax.

The public schools are a mess where $7 billion gets spent a year and only half of those funds actually gets spent on the children.  Teachers are underpaid, school buildings are literally falling apart and our kids use 20-year-old textbooks. Our public hospitals are a mess where people die daily because of poor management and poor care.  Garbage recycling is not really happening, although everyone is bundling and separating their garbage. According to the New York Public Interest Research Group only 5 percent of all solid waste is currently being recycled!  Most of our pre-sorted waste is being dumped into landfills and out-of-sea. This is a giant fraud on the citizens of our city. These are but a few of the major crises confronting New Yorkers that I wanted to do something about.

Many said, "Well, the incumbent takes many of your positions, so what's the difference?" The difference was and is that agreeing that homelessness is terrible, that crime is rampant, that the Commercial Rent Tax is onerous is fine and dandy, but hey, lady, you've been in the City Council for 4 years now, how come you've not introduced any bills to deal with these issues? How come you have one of the lowest records of new legislation development?  How come you have one of the poorest attendance records to council sessions? Actions speak and as I told people while on the stump, had I been elected you would have seen a blizzard, a barrage, a blitzkreig of new bills and proposed laws - a literal bombardment of initiatives. Unlike the incumbent, I would have had district offices in all parts of the district - not just in Harlem. Proof of this was my heavy campaigning in Harlem, and Field's virtual non-appearance either during the past few years or during the campaign in the Upper West Side or Morningside Heights.

Some people ask me, "Are you down because you lost?" My response is twofold:  First, I'm proud that we fought the flight and flew the flag and helped Rudy get elected and through Rudy many of the things that we want to see will hopefully materialize.  Second, I tell them a tale that goes as follows:

If sometimes you get discouraged, consider this fellow: He dropped out of grade; ran a country store; went broke; took 15 years to pay off his bills; took a wife; unhappy marriage; ran for the House; lost twice; ran for the Senate; delivered a speech that became a classic.  Audience at the time was indifferent. Attacked daily by the press and despised by half the country. Despite all this, imagine how many people all over the world have been inspired by this awkward, rumpled, brooding man who signed his name simply - A. Lincoln.

Howard Barbanel is happy to have experienced running for public office and is grateful to everyone who supported his candidacy.

The 90`s

I hope you're right; I don't want to be right

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of September 29th - October 5th, 1993

Benjamin Netanyahu: "We recall the terrible stupid example of Neville Chamberlain believing the solemn word of that pathological liar Adolf Hitler.  You trust the word of that liar Arafat, as if his word has any credit, as if his promises amount to anything, this person in whose word it is impossible to place any trust. Youthe government are much worse than Chamberlain, because he endangered the security and freedom of another people, another state, not his own."

On his deathbed Neville Chamberlain said that "everything would have been all right if only Hitler had kept his word."

In his book, Hitler's Diplomat, The Life and Times of Joachim von Ribbentrop, author John Weitz related the following: "Shortly before he returned to London, Chamberlain had asked Hitler, at the end of the meeting in the Fuhrer's private Munich apartment, to sign a note declaring that all future Anglo-German disputes would be resolved through peaceful negotiations.  Hitler shrugged and signed. It was this paper that Chamberlain triuphantly waved when he spole the famous phrase 'peace for our time.' Reinhard Spitzy, an aide to von Ribbentrop, reported that a short while after the agreements were concluded and the 'paper' was signed, he followed Hitler and Von Ribbentrop down the stairs the Fuhrerbau.  He was close enough to overhear them. Von Ribbentrop petulantly criticized the agreement and the special 'paper' for Chamberlain, whereupon Hitler said softly, 'Well, you don't have to take it so seriously. This paper is really of no great importance'."

An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll conducted the day following the Rabin-Arafat White House Handshake reveals that 60 percent of Americans polled still thought that the "prospects for peace working in the Middle East are slim." Additionally, 70 percent felt that U.S. tax dollars should not be spent to ensure the success of the Israel-PLO accord.  One cal only infer from that that the idea of American troops there wol be even less acceptable.

Israeli Cabinet Minister Yossi Sarid calls this agreement "Sovereignty Minus" for the Palestinian Arabs and having read the agreement (and wondering what the secret agreements are) one has to believe him.  Netanyahu commented on this in the Knesset: "What exactly is Autonomy Plus/Sovereignty Minus? You are giving them the lands, control over the lands - by the way, not only the private lands, but also state lands (accounting for 60 percent of total acreage in Judea and Samaria) - first to give them the state, to grant someone control over the lands is to grant them control over the state, because the state does not exist in the air, it is not suspended somewhere up above.  The most important and valuable asset of a state is its land … you are transferring states lands to them."

Additionally, the Israeli government is transferring all water rights to the PLO.  Judea and Samaria's watersheds account presently for 30 percent of Israel's total water supply.  In effect, Israel will now be purchasing water from Yasir Arafat.

Concerning Israeli army withdrawals from the territories, Netanyahu had this to say; "Fine, the IDF withdraws: Who takes their place? The Palestinian Police? They are Arafat's minions, Arafat selects and recruits them and authorizes them...the police are the PLO, the PLO terrorists! They will replace the IDF in the posts and emplacements from which the IDF will withdraw.  In fact, you are creating a Palestinian state, transporting the PLO headquarters from Tunisia to Jericho, 15 minutes from Jerusalem!"

To quote a right-wing friend of mine, "Shabtai Zvi was not the Messiah and this agreement is not necessarily the harbinger of peace."

If the opposition is correct and this leads ultimately to a PLO state, to increased terrorism and eventually to the next Arab-Israeli War - this war will cost tens of thousands of Jewish lives as the front lines  will invariably be in the Tel Aviv suburbs and fighting could be street-to-street, house-to-house and hand-to-hand.

As the agreement calls for internationally-supervised elections for a Palestinian legislature, this body will attain a great measure of legitimacy in the eyes of the world.  One wonders how long it will take this assembly to declare independence and sovereignty for Palestine and consequently how long will it take for 100 nations to recognize this entity and for 25 of them to open embassies in Jericho? Who will oppose this? Israel? If it does, Israel will then find itself again as the world's pariah- quashing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and engendering the world's wrath.  If Israel acquiesces, there will be a second Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria - the exact scenario that departed Laborites Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan found to be an anathema. In fact, I recall Golda's reaction when asked about the "Palestinian people." She replied, "there is no such thing!"

Final scenario - if this PLO state comes into existence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, how long will it take the majority of Jordanians (who are Palestinians too) to say, "how come we have independence on the West Bank and now on the east?" The possibility of an aunschloss - a takeover of Jordan by the PLO state might not be unrealistic - thereby creating a Palestinian Arab state on both banks of the Jordan and boundaries much as existed between Israel and Jordan prior to 1967.

This is the bleak picture.  Over the past few weeks my colleagues and I have been, to borrow from popular music, tossing and turning, have been bewitched, bothered and bewildered.  The Arafat-Rabin handshake turned many a stomach. I find myself in an interesting situation: For the first time I have to hope that the opposition is wrong. Why? Because if the right is right and these horrible premonitions come true, many, many Jews will die and nobody wants that.  I told a close friend of mine who is a big Peace Now supporter (we have other things in common) that "I hope you're right - I don't want to be right."

The 90`s

Jerusalem will need God's protection

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published Week of September 8th - 14th, 1993

Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres must be going senile.  They've made a deal with the Nazis.  Here's the rationale: "We're tired of fighting terrorism and anti-Semitism and we're absolutely fixated on obtaining this year's Nobel Peace Prize, so, since in the relative scheme od things, the S.A. Brown Shirts (the PLO) are far more moderate than the S.S. Black Shirts (Hamas, PFLP, etc.), let's make a deal with the Brown Shirts."

Yasser Arafat is really on a par with people like Kurt Franz, he recently released (from German jail) former commandment of Treblinka and his crony the acquitted John Demjanjuk - Mr. Arafat has the blood of hundreds of innocent Jewish women and children on his hands.  At the next meeting between Israel and the PLO he should be kidnapped like Eichman and out on trial in Jerusalem for terrorism, murder, war crimes and chronic ugliness.

Israel has made broad concessions to the PLO without the PLO giving up anything! In fact, Arafat is equivocating on repealing the 1964 PLO Covenant provision calling for Israel's destruction, saying the whole Palestinian National Council would have to meet.  He doesn't want such a meeting because the PNC would probably vote to throw him out instead.

Israel is willing to sign off on segments of the document without that clause removed anyway.  If the PLO retracts the clause, Israel is willing to formally recognize the PLO as "the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" and grant that organization absolution by sprinkling "magic Holy water" on its leaders and transforming it (like the Christian trans-substantiation of the Eucharist) into something entirely different than a terrorist organization.  "It will become a "political organization," asserts Shimon Peres.

The Labor Government lied to the Israeli electorate when it said it wouldn't negotiate with the PLO.  The Labor Government lied to everyone when it repeatedly denied media reports indicating it was holding clandestine meetings with the PLO, all the while conducting 14 rounds of talks in Oslo, Norway.

The Palestinian negotiating team in Washington, normally the mouthpiece of Tunis, knew absolutely nothing about the PLO-Israeli accord and consequently the delegation head, Dr. Haidar Abel Shafi, said he won't sign-off on anything just yet.

The Labor Government has just rendered worthless the entire Madrid formula and all agreements thereto by going around the entire process.

Israeli Army Radio quotes IDF Deputy Chief of Staff General Amonon Shahak at stating that the "IDF will have difficulties fighting terrorism after the agreement with the PLO is implemented... the agreement creates complex security problems."  The Labor Government plans to use a "heavily armed" and "very strong" Palestinian Police Force (led by the PLO) to quell the Hamas and left-wing Palestinian terrorists, believing such a force will quash terrorism; believing that there won't be a bloodbath of Arab against Arab just like in the intifada today; believing that Jews won't be causalities at the hands of such a banana republic type of paramilitary force.

Ahmed Jabril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (Communist) threatening to assassinate Arafat.  Hamas (fundamentalist) has threatened the same. Could Arafat survive even a few weeks in Gaza? Would the agreement be then worth the paper it's written on?

Ha'aretz quote Jordan's Kind Hussein on Aug. 29 as saying the PLO-Israeli accord and its Gaza and Jericho First Place "constitutes a danger to the national security of the Kingdom of Jordan."  The U.S. State Department on the 30th was "studying the agreement" because they weren't sure if the plan is "fully baked" (New York Times, Aug. 30)

Ma'ariv in a front-page story on Aug. 26 reported that the Israeli government will allow the PLO to establish its headquarters in Gaza.

The Israeli government will allow the PLO to establish its headquarters in Gaza.

The Israeli government is permitting Arabs living in Jerusalem to vote in Palestinian elections, thereby effectively acceding to PLO demands over the Holy City and permitting its Canonization.

Likud Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that "it's incredible and incredulous that an Israeli government has just agreed to the PLO's phased plan for the destruction of Israel and that "the PLO is a Trojan Horse that once inside Judea and Samaria would then be in a position to press Israel toward the sea should a future armed conflict arise." Netanyahu went on to say, "If, as Americans, you had Arafat 10 miles from Washington, how secure would you feel?" Yitshak Shamir in Yediot Aharont has said "peace which is based in abandonment of the lands of our heritage is an ineffectual gimmick and an empty pack of lies."

The PLO-Israeli accord gives the Palestinians the following according to Yediot:

1. [Palestinian] "elections will constitute a significant interim preparatory step toward the realization for the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements."

2. The Palestinian Council's jurisdiction will cover the whole of the West Bank and Gaza "who integrity will be preserved during the interim period."

3. The accord calls for massive international aid and investment in the territories, creation of development banks, quasi-governmental ministries, including establishing a Palestinian radio and TV station.

4. Arrangements will be made for the "safe passage for persons and transportation between the Gaza strip and Jericho" meaning some kind of Danzig-corridor bisecting Israel.

 "Forgiveness is mine sayeth the Lord" and at this Rosh Hashanah time, a time of prayer, repentance and forgiveness.  Yitzhak Rabin has forgiven Arafat and the PLO for everything that they are and everything that they've done. Clearly, Mr. Arafat received divine revelation on the road from Damascus like Saint Paul leading to his change of heart and just as clearly, Rabin and Peres must have received divine instructions regarding granting that deathbed pardon to Arafat.  Benjamin Netanyahu sums it up best from the perspective of a Likudnik: "We want to make the peace, not rest in the peace." Say Hallelujah! Pray for the peace of Jerusalem because she'll need God's protection (from others and from itself) now more than ever. Pray hard. Happy New Year everybody.

The 90`s

Split Personalities and Deviant Behavior

Note: Written by Howard Barbanel, Published August 12th, 1993

The American Heritage Dictionary defines "schizophrenia" the following way: "Any of a group of psychotic reactions characterized by withdrawal from reality with highly variable accompanying affective, behavioral and intellectual disturbances."

What other diagnosis would one arrive at when examining the quirky and quixotic policy meanderings of the Rabin/Peres Labor government in Israel?

Here you have a government that on the one hand unleashes a powerful pulverization of the Hizbullah thugs in southern Lebanon -- blissfully blasting away with the same marked intensity that aroused their own self-righteous indignation when Likud was in power and on the other hand sends its own Yossi Sarid off to chat with Arafat (as reported by the New York Times on August 6th and The Jerusalem Report on July 29th) in the hopes of wooing the perennially bad-shaven PLO maven to make a deal.  It also has Foreign Minister Peres (the Neville Chamberlain of our time) looking to apologize for and seduce Libya's Muamar Khadaffi in a spasm of whitewashing and wishful thinking that has even aroused the consternation of the policy prognosticators and promulgators at the U.S. State Department -- an institution known for Arabist tendencies!

So fixated is Labor on realizing a peace agreement that it is willing to accede to cease fires of dubious value in South Lebanon while concurrently absolving the real culprit in the crisis from responsibility -- that means Syria and Hafez Assad.  You've got Syrian troops in South Lebanon and they're providing safe cover for the smuggling of arms and material from Iran to the "Party of God" (Hizbullah) cadres. Instead of taking the parents to task, Labor scolds the unruly children. In so doing it kindles the wrath of the world media and gets itself portrayed as the heavy as TV crews film "hundreds of thousands" of Lebanese civilians fleeing the fracas.

Labor continues to tease the Syrians (and send Israelis into states of apoplexy) over possible withdrawals from the Golan Heights wile ignoring that Syria has spent billions of Saudi Arabian dollars on a warchest of arms and missile and weapons of mass destruction.  Labor ignores that Syria is heavily involved in producing, refining and distributing cocaine and heroin both in Syria and Syrian-controlled Lebanon. According to the Center for Strategic Policy, some 40 percent of the heroin found today on U.S. streets comes from these sources.  And Syria gets stronger with the development of newly-discovered oil reserves and with Western sanction continues to borrow billions from international financial institutions for ever more arms purchases. Syria is still a brutal dictatorship in the Iraqi mold and still refuses to allow the free emigration of its Jewish community -- a fact again ignored and not pressed by Labor.

Rabin and Peres and their Meretz ministers see a marked distinction between Arafat and Hamas and Hezbullah -- even though the PLO has never recanted on its charter provisions calling for the eradication of Israel and is still calling for Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.  This policy further ignores that it is the PLO's Fatah wing that is responsible for most of the intifada violence in the territories perpetrated against Jewish and Arab civilians. This ignores that Arafat (and the Palestinian negotiating team in Washington too) have not forsworn the use of "armed struggle against the Zionist entity" while participating in peace talks in Washington.

What is amusing is watching Meretz (Peace Now) cabinet ministers like Shalumit Aloni and Amnon Rubenstein squirm in their chairs while coming up with profound rationalizations for condoning the Israeli army's actions in Lebanon! Ironically, contrary to Labor/Meretz behavior when Likud was in power, Likud refrained from any criticism of the Lebanon action (Not even saying the government should have gone still further) and even participated I quashing an Arab/Communist Party Motion of No Confidence in the government two weeks ago! Had the shoe been on the other foot, given prior habits as a barometer, Labor would have been kicking Yitzhak Shamir from here to tomorrow all over the Israeli and world media for "warmongering" and might have been tempted to capitalize on a No-Confidence motion like the aforementioned one to bring down the government and install themselves in power. 

On another issue that undermines Israeli long-term security, Labor is taking 650 million shekels from the immigration-absorption budget and transferring it into the general fund -- all this while the number of new immigrants from the former Soviet Union dramatically declines for the second year in a row.  Soviet Jewry activists are livid over this -- rightly saying that the 650 million shekels should not only be retained for absorption but that more funds should be added. Many Soviet Jews are writing home saying this government has broken its promises and its faith with the new immigrants and couldn't care one whit whether more Soviet Jews come and whether they integrate successfully into Israeli society.

As a final broadside at Labor, this is a government that is letting John Demjanjuk go free -- scot-free from any punishment for being a guard at the Sobibor Concentration Camp and other SS activities.  When you cull the apologetics for the PLO, Syria and Libya and stir-in the Demjanjuk issue and the Soviet olim, one has to wonder whether this government really has a Jewish agenda or is pursuing a slipshod pastiche of delusional geopolitics.